The Difference Between Western Society Attitudes to Puberty and Religious Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Puberty

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The Difference Between Western Society Attitudes to Puberty and Religious Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Puberty

For our Theatre In Education (T.I.E.) piece we decided to tackle the

issue of puberty and the different changes boys and girls go through

during this, sometimes difficult, stages of their lives.

We decided to do in this in an effort to teach younger pupils in the

school a little more about puberty and set aside the fact from the

fiction.

We aimed to do this by performing a series of our own short

sketches-each with a different theme and issue to tackle, for example,

pubic hair, periods and hormones. By doing this we hoped to shed a bit

more light on issues which can worry some people and explain the

matters in a grown-up way. We also wanted to make sure that what we

were saying was getting through in a positive way so as to teach the

pupils a little more about puberty.

From doing this exercise we realised that the Western attitude towards

puberty is very relaxed and does not signify a great deal. We also

realised that some people can become embarrassed by the issue and most

people avoid it altogether.

However, this is not the case in a lot of other cultures, in fact, far

from it.

For young female Hindu's puberty marks the change from a girl to a

woman in the eyes of family and friends.

A Hindu girl experiencing her first period will spend the first four

nights of bleeding in a stable away form the rest of the family. This

is because Hindu's do not look favourably on the menstrual cycle and

believe that a woman who is on her period is 'polluted and potentially

polluting.' During the menstrual cycle Hindu females must not enter

the house, fetch water or cook any food. These rules also apply to

even the young adolescent female who has just started puberty.

On the final day of bleeding the adolescent must go into a stream,

wash her body, hair, clothes, rug and the bowl she kept separate for

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